Cancer metastasis is responsible for over 90% of cancer related deaths. The metastatic spread of cancer is due to the shedding of cancer cells from a primary tumor, which enters blood and lymphatic vessels as circulating tumor cells, which can then travel to anatomically distant organs to form new tumors.
Currently, there are no methods to target circulating tumor cells in the bloodstream to prevent metastasis. There are related technologies that isolate circulating tumor cells (CTC) from patient blood, which can be used to track the severity of the cancer. However, there are no related technologies that can both capture and kill rare CTC in blood and lymphatic vessels.